For sound chip ALC653 (AC97) which was on my Gigabyte motherboard GA-8i865GME-775 . The supplied drivers did not support Windows-ME, so I visited Realtek. It is a 17meg download. When installed, my sound started working successfully. The install wizard does the whole job, you don't need to go into system devices to manually update the device.

The driver might work with XP and 2000 as well, and something called Windows98 Gold (!?). Windows 98 SE should work if you have Directx8.

It should work on other motherboards as well because the driver is from Realtek, the maker of the sound chip. The Gigabyte website also has sound drivers, so if this doesn't work for you, check there.